


Knit and Purl

by houdini74



Series: Clint and Marcy [8]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Fluff, Knitting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houdini74/pseuds/houdini74
Summary: Marcy teaches David to knit.





	Knit and Purl

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver) collection. 

> Thanks for the fun opportunity to write some fluff about knitting. Also, I don't actually know how to knit, so any mistakes in that regard are mine.
> 
> **Prompt:**  
Knitting. Who's knitting? For whom? Badly? Well? What are they making? Is it a secret or just a casual thing? Make it funny or make it tender, I don't care.

“David? What do you want to do today?”

It’s the Saturday before Thanksgiving. David and Patrick arrived two days ago for their first visit since the wedding and Patrick’s first Thanksgiving with them since he’d moved to Schitt’s Creek three and a half years ago. They’re alone in the house, Clint and Patrick have gone to watch the junior hockey team play an afternoon game, leaving Marcy and David to entertain themselves.

“There’s that fall market at the community centre?” There’s no response from the living room. “David?”

David appears in the kitchen door, he’s wearing his signature black and white and he’s holding the ball of black yarn that she’d left on the living room table. “We could do that. Or, I was thinking...maybe...you could teach me to knit?” He looks unsure but determined as the tips of his fingers dig into the compact ball.

She tilts her head to one side and raises her eyebrows, unsure why he’s asking. “Um...yes...okay...yes, I can do that.” 

A tiny flash of relief crosses his face and she realizes that he’s not just asking on a whim but because this is important to him. “What do you want to make?”

He looks down at the ball of yarn and his fingers dig deeper into the tightly packed wool. When his eyes meet hers, they’re unwavering. “It’s Christmas soon and Patrick’s really good at gifts. I’m not as good at thoughtful things, so I wanted to make him something, from me.”

How do the people who see this man and her son every day withstand this love and sincerity, she wonders? How do the two of them not buckle beneath it? The regular mockery and teasing that is a key part of their relationship makes more sense to her now as it balances out this other, more overwhelming part of the two of them.

“We can do that.” She swallows away the lump in her throat. “Why don’t we start with a scarf, since that’s easiest?” She takes the ball of yarn from and puts it on the counter. She looks at David, who is now standing awkwardly without the yarn to distract him. “I think we probably need to go to the store to pick out the right colors.”

At the yarn store, David stops short just inside the door. “How can there possibly be this many shades of yarn?” The store is crowded with shelves filled with different hues and weights of yarn, a visual cacophony of color. 

She guides David to the back corner helps him pick out knitting needles and two colors of wool, in blue, of course. She can tell he’s surprised by Beth, the young woman who runs the store. As usual, her short spiky hair is dyed a bright color, it’s green today, and she’s wearing a black roller derby t-shirt with the words ‘you skate like a boy’ written on it in bright pink. Still, Marcy can see that he’s pleased when Beth confirms they’ve chosen the right items for his scarf and he agrees to send her a photo for the store’s Instagram account when it’s done.

Back at home, she finds a simple pattern on Ravelry and teaches David how to cast on to the needles, waiting until he builds a more confident rhythm. 

“Count your stitches for each row. If you have too many or too few, it will mess up your pattern.”

David nods, all of his focus is going towards the needles, which look tiny in his large hands. He gets to the end of the stitches needed to cast on and looks up at her, delighted. His delight is almost childlike, the joy of learning something new lights him up. She’s about to take him to the next step when he loses control of the ball of yarn and it bounces away under the coffee table. 

Watching David crawl on the floor to retrieve the yarn makes her smile to herself, although she’s careful to school her expression when David looks back up at her. David gives a huff of frustration and settles back on the couch, wool gripped firmly in one hand. 

After about an hour, David’s made it through four rows of stitches. It’s barely the beginning of anything, but David holds it up to admire it, tugging a bit at the edges where it’s curling at the corners. She’s about to take him through switching colors when they hear Clint and Patrick’s car pull up in the driveway. David quickly winds up the yarn and sets it on the table, both of them trying to look nonchalant. 

She hears Patrick and Clint shedding their coats and shoes at the kitchen door, and moments later Patrick is kissing David hello, squeezing his shoulder as he tucks himself into the couch beside him. Clint follows behind and she gives him a quick kiss of her own and takes the cup of tea that she’d forgotten in the kitchen. The mug is hot so Clint must have microwaved it for her like he always does. She smiles at him over the rim as she takes a sip.

“Are you still knitting?” Patrick holds up David’s ball of yarn and behind him, she sees David stiffen in alarm.

“I like to make a few things for the clothing drive at the shelter.” She takes the yarn from Patrick and sets it back on the table.

Patrick turns to David. “She used to make me mittens every winter when I was a kid. I hated it, I wanted to have cool ski gloves like everyone else.” 

“You should be glad someone made you mittens.” David’s voice is sharp and he stands up suddenly and heads towards the kitchen. “I need some water.” 

“David?” Patrick looks confused and he starts to get up before she stops him.

“I’ll go talk to him.”

In the kitchen, David has taken a glass out of the cupboard but he’s standing in front of the sink with both hands wrapped around the empty glass. His eyes meet hers as comes into the room.

“I knew this was a dumb idea.”

Instead of replying right away, she takes the glass from his hand, reaching past him to get the water jug from the fridge. Once his glass is full, she sets it on the counter and takes her phone out of her pocket, flipping through the photos until she finds the one she wants. She hands the phone to David. It was the winter before Patrick had moved to Schitt’s Creek and they’d gone skating on the pond behind her sister’s house. In the photo, he’s wearing a navy blue toque that she’d given him for Christmas that year and he’s doing jazz hands to show off the matching mittens.

“Ten-year-olds want to wear store-bought ski gloves. Thirty-year-olds want handmade mittens that someone they love made them.”

David looks at her and then back down at the photo. 

“He’ll love whatever you make him because you made it and he loves you. That’s all the matters.”

“Okay.” David hands the phone back to her. Spontaneously, she leans in and gives him a quick hug. After a short pause, he hugs her back, holding her tightly for a second. 

As they walk back to the living room, she can hear Clint and Patrick rehashing the best moments from the game that afternoon, but Patrick looks up at David questioningly when David comes to sit beside him. David slips his hand almost tentatively into Patrick’s, letting Patrick tangle their fingers together. He leans close to Patrick to murmur in his ear, an apology, she suspects, for his earlier outburst. Her son squeezes David’s hand and the two of them nestle into each other. 

The next afternoon, she’s teaching David how to switch colors when he suddenly thrusts the needles into her hands and sits back on the couch. Seconds later, Patrick comes into the living room. He’s interrupted them off and on all day, as though he and David are magnets that can’t help coming back together after time apart. Luckily, David seems to feel whatever force pulls Patrick into the room, and so far they’ve avoided being caught.

“What are we doing in here?”

“Um...I’m watching your mom knit?”

Patrick frowns and tilts his head at David, puzzled. “Huh. We’re going to run to the store and get the things on your list, is there anything else?”

“Maybe some pecans for the salad?”

Patrick nods and kisses David quickly. David smiles into it, the corners of his mouth curling upwards until the moment their lips meet. There’s nothing inappropriate about the kiss, but it feels unbearably intimate and she looks away to focus on David’s knitting. 

She waits until she hears the car start up in the driveway before she passes the knitting back to David. She shows him how to add the second color, watching closely as the second stripe of lighter blue grows on top of the first one. David’s scarf is about three inches long now, and she can tell he’s having trouble with the tension, it’s pulling in on the sides. 

“Relax your tension so it’s even.”

David frowns at her, tearing his attention away from the needles. “I don’t know what that means.”

“If your hands are too tense, that will translate to your knitting and your stitches will get tighter.”

“You’re telling me that this won’t work out if I’m too tense? Maybe I should have chosen a different hobby.” He’s joking but she can hear the doubt in his voice.

“You’ll be fine. You just need to practice.” She pats his knee and sits back to watch him knit a few more rows. He builds up a bit of a rhythm, his needles move a bit faster. He pauses at the end of a row and looks up at her. 

“Thank you. You didn’t have to…” He trails off, gesturing at the knitting. 

“Oh honey, I’m happy to help.” He flushes at the endearment, a pleased look on his face. She hadn’t meant to use the pet name, it had just slipped out. She pushes back the urge to smother him in affection and for a second she wishes she could have been there when he was a little boy, to bandage his scraped knees and make him mittens that he would have hated. She tucks the black and white wool she was using before David and Patrick arrived into the bottom of her knitting bag and pulls out the mittens she’s been knitting for the shelter.

David is a few rows into the lighter blue color, he’s biting his lip in concentration as he knits. She sits back with her own project, the two of them knitting in companionable silence.

***

“I think I did it wrong.”

David holds up his knitting to the camera, and even on the small screen she can see that it’s misshapen and kind of awful. It’s more of a triangle than a rectangle and there’s a hole in the middle where David has dropped some stitches. 

“Okay, well. Why don’t we say that was a practice project and start again.”

David looks frustrated and he tosses the knitting onto the couch beside him. “I should have known better than to try this. I can’t do this kind of thing.” With a huff, he gets up and Marcy can just see him in the background, pacing and shaking his hands.

“David Rose, you get back here and sit down.” It’s the voice she’d used with Patrick when he was little. She loves David to pieces, but sometimes she wants to smack his parents for raising this man who gets scared and gives up so easily.

David sits back in front of his phone, a chagrined look on his face. “Sorry, you’re being so nice and I’m being so difficult.”

“You can’t expect to be perfect on your first try.”

“I think I was hoping for okay.” There’s a smirk on his face that lets her know that he’s going to be all right.

“Did you figure out what went wrong?”

“I...well, I dropped those stitches in the middle and the tension’s all wrong.” David’s poking at his knitting, but he’s thoughtful now instead of frustrated.

“And you know how to fix it for next time?”

He looks up and nods, the spark of excitement is back in his eyes. They chat about the Christmas preparations at the store and the new vendors David has found for the holidays. She tells him about what Christmas will be like with her sisters and their families. She can tell that David is overwhelmed by the idea of a family gathering with so many people. She wonders if it would be better to have a series of smaller family events at New Years when he and Patrick visit or if it would be better to have everyone over at once. She vows to ask Patrick the next time she talks to him.

When the call ends, she picks up her own knitting. She’s almost finished the scarf she’s been knitting for David. It’s a more complicated pattern than the one that David has been using, with diagonal black and white stripes capped off with solid black ends. She’d started on it last August, and it makes her smile to think that both Patrick and David will have handmade scarves for Christmas. 

She doesn’t hear from David again until a few days before Christmas. She hasn’t wanted to push in case he’s decided to give up on his knitting and not tell her. Then, one evening, she gets a photo. The scarf is slightly uneven, she can tell that the tension gave David problems all the way through and one of the ends tapers to a point more than the other, but it’s a perfectly recognizable and serviceable scarf. Patrick is going to love it.

It’s Christmas morning when she gets another photo from David. The photo is of him and Patrick. As always when she sees pictures of them together, the affection between them makes her heart skip. David is smirking at the camera as Patrick presses a kiss to his cheek. They’re both wearing pajamas and scarves, blue for Patrick and black and white for David. Despite the imperfections, Patrick looks delighted. She can tell that David is trying to downplay the gift, but he looks proud, nonetheless. She opens the accompanying text message.

“When we come for New Year’s you’ll have to teach me how to make a matching hat!”


End file.
